


these hours and this heart (the only things left to give)

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Time Travel, background canon relationships, does it count as kid fic if the kids are your past selves, in fact there’s two of each loser, patricia knows and audra too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-11-15 09:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20864351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “So I don’t remember any time travel happening,” says Richie, making eye contact with his younger self on the couch and internally mourning his Twizzler stash. “But my memory’s shit, so what about you? Got any idea why there’s a larval me on my couch, right now, eating my Twizzlers?”or: a year after Derry, Richie comes home to find a younger version of himself raiding his fridge. now the Losers—bothversions—have to figure out how to send the kids back home where they belong. meanwhile, Richie tries to help his kid version out with his sexuality and Feelings, which is easier said than done when he’s still not dealing with his own feelings towards Eddie.





	1. this is a surprise visit

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Ingrid Michaelson's "Hey Kid".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Fall Out Boy’s “Dear Future Self”.

Richie’s got pretty good security, is the thing.

He lives in LA. He’s a relatively famous comedian with a couple of Netflix specials under his belt. Of course he’s got an alarm system on his apartment, and before then whoever wants to come up has to flash like, three different IDs before Jay, who mans the counter, will even talk to them, if they’re not accompanied by a resident, who _still_ has to flash three IDs to prove their identities.

Also, most people don’t actually feel like scaling four stories just to get into Richie’s previously-empty apartment. So, generally, if someone’s in his apartment, it’s because _he invited them there._ Happens more often now that he remembers the rest of the Losers’ Club, who’re also responsible for turning the previously unlived-in place into Richie’s _home_.

When he opens the door to his apartment this time, though, he hears the sound of someone raiding his kitchen. Whoever they are, they’re not too subtle about it, he can hear the cabinet doors opening and closing, tubs of ice cream and cereal boxes and leftover takeout being unceremoniously dumped onto the kitchen table. They sound _ravenous_, whoever it is, and Richie tenses immediately.

He should call 911. He should get security up here. He should do a lot of things.

Instead he grabs the baseball bat Stan had gotten him for his new special a month ago, still wrapped in plastic on the couch. All he can think of is It—somehow It’s come back, somehow It’s found where he lives, and It’s going to skewer him and eat him and all the time relish in the taste of his terror. Well, fuck that. _Fuck_ that. He doesn’t like his chances of going up against It alone, but goddammit, he’s gonna spit in Its beady yellow eyes first and call It the shittiest clown he’s ever fucking seen, It’s not even in the goddamn fucking National Clown Registry.

The layout of his apartment is pretty simple: living room in the middle, kitchen and dining room to one side, doors to the two bedrooms and bathroom to the other. As he steps into the living room, he can see that the fridge door’s open, but it’s blocking whoever’s raiding his fridge from view, and he swallows the bile building in the back of his throat.

Then he steps into the kitchen, just as the intruder stands up and turns around, his arms full of liquor. Mop of dark hair, Hawaiian T-shirt, coke-bottle glasses—

“What the _fuck,_” Richie says, staring at his younger version.

“Oh, _fuck_,” says younger Richie, then, “Holy fuck, you’re the guy from the pictures!” He puts the bottles down on the table, says, “Listen, I’m not taking anything from your place except like, food and shit, just put the bat down—”

“Oh my fucking god,” says Richie, putting the bat down.

\--

He calls Mike, first, after he’s reassured baby Richie (well, teenaged Richie, he looks maybe thirteen or fourteen at most, but Richie is forty and teenagers look like fucking _fetuses_ at that age) that he’s not going to kill him or make him suck his dick (_ew_). He paces the carpet waiting for the phone to ring, trying to ignore the way baby Richie is practically vibrating on the couch.

“So what the fuck is even going on anyway?” baby Richie asks.

“What do you think I’m even calling my friend for?” Richie shoots back. He doesn’t dare let this younger version of him out of his sight, just in case. Just in case. “Come on, pick up, pick up.”

Mike picks up at last, and says, “_Hey, Richie, uh—_”

“So I don’t remember any time travel happening,” says Richie, making eye contact with his younger self on the couch and internally mourning his Twizzler stash. “But my memory’s shit, so what about you? Got any idea why there’s a larval me on my couch, right now, eating my Twizzlers?”

“Holy fucking _shit_,” says baby Richie, unable to contain himself, “I turn into a dumpster raccoon with a five-foot forehead when I get older? Did your dick shrivel up or something too? ‘Cause I would not be surprised if it did.”

Richie is forty fucking years old, and he finally understands the occasional murderous look in a friend’s eye when he keeps going with a joke. “Beep beep, little baby fucker,” he tells him. “The big kids are talking.”

The younger Richie sticks his tongue out. God, if this kid is when he peaked, Richie’s just fucked, and not in the good way.

“_Yeah, neither do I,_” says Mike, and he sounds weirdly chill about this considering, you know, time travel, paradoxes, all that sci-fi shit that inevitably goes horribly wrong. Somewhere in the back Richie can hear baby Mike asking questions too. God. “_I’m hitting up the library and asking around, maybe something about the ritual did something weird with the timeline. Time always was a little weird around Neibolt._”

Even now the name never fails to send a shiver down Richie’s spine. “Pretty optimistic of you,” he says, “it’s not like there’s anything about time travel outside of science fiction.”

“_You’d be surprised,_” says Mike. “_I’ll let you know if I find anything! Oh, hey, hang on, younger me wants to talk—_”

There’s a brief series of noises, some muttered words that Richie can’t quite make out, and then he hears baby Mike say, “_Hey, where’s Richie? Not you-Richie._”

“Hey, call for you,” says Richie, tossing his phone to baby-Richie and watching him fumble with it. “Don’t touch the screen, you’ll end the call.”

“Mike!” baby-Richie says, grinning so widely that Richie’s heart cracks a little. It’s been a while since he felt that happy. “Is your future as bleak and shitty as mine? Wait, you guys are in _Miami_? Lucky you! I hear there’s a bunch of hot chicks in bikinis there—”

_They know,_ Richie doesn’t say, but his heart cracks all the more. _They know you like boys, and they love you all the same. You tell them and they love you anyway, bring you out for drinks, and sometimes Bev or Bill try to set you up with a guy they think you’ll like, and when you call Stan in the middle of the night freaking out over your new material he’ll talk you down and through it. And you tell the world, and the world mostly thinks you’re brave, and you have a small and dedicated group of fans who think the whole fucking world of you, and your best friends, your family, they love you even at your worst. Even when you were hiding. Even then._

But he’s only just started coming to terms with—all of it, really, the repression and the emotions and everything. And he’s forty, and he has a therapist who’s out and proud, he has advantages now that he didn’t when he was thirteen and scared, trapped in a small town, trying to squash his secret down, down, down. Little baby Richie’s going to take it hard, focus on the part where he told, and be terrified as fuck. Right now, he needs the kid relaxed, not scared of himself.

He goes and looks through the fridge. God, he can’t believe he used to drink when he was thirteen, how the fuck did he _survive_ anything? He pulls a juice box out from his fridge, then a bottle of iced coffee, part of the care package his neighbor Caleb had dumped on him the day before.

When he walks back into the living room, his younger self’s lounging on the couch, sprawled like some horrible cat intent on claiming this part of the room for their kingdom.

“—and he looks like Bender fucked a sewer rat in a Hawaiian shirt,” baby Richie’s saying. “Yeah! He really does!”

“This rat’s got your juice box,” says Richie, acidly, “but sure, if you don’t want it, ‘s’all mine now.”

“What’s the flavor?”

“Orange,” says Richie.

Baby Richie makes an unhappy noise, and says, almost whining, “No _fair_, that’s my favorite!”

“What a funny coincidence, it’s mine too,” says Richie. “Can I talk to Mike? My Mike, not baby Mike.”

“We’re _thirteen_—”

“Fetus Mike,” Richie corrects, and sees the murder enter baby Richie’s eyes.


	2. the young ones are growing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Kim Wilde's "Kids In America".

Mike promises to call him if he finds anything. That promise turns into a promise to text the group chat instead, because Richie very quickly finds out that everybody else suddenly has a baby version of themselves in their cars, in their homes, on their fancy boat.

Patricia answers when Richie calls, and says, “Stan’s trying to teach his teenaged self how to play catch—it’s hilarious, they’re _bad_ at it.” Off in the distance he hears shouting and cursing, as though the ball did not go where the Stans had wanted it to go. “They’re going to go birdwatching later. I’ll call you guys with details.”

Bev and Ben spam the group chat with pictures of their kiddie versions ooh-ing and ahh-ing over their boat, over Bev’s fashion designs and Ben’s architectural models. Bill texts the group with _just how bad were my endings, guys,_ with an attached picture of his baby version scowling at his book.

_super fucking bad,_ Richie texts. _also how did all of you put up with fetus me because I’m going to feed him to the sewers._

_Do Not Cause A Time Paradox Richie,_ comes Bill’s response. Where the fuck did he pick that quirk up?

_beep beep, Rich,_ Ben adds.

_I tuned you out half the time honestly,_ Stan writes, about fifteen minutes after the initial question.

It takes Eddie some time, but eventually he sends a picture too: little baby Eddie freaking out over the state of his apartment. It’s hilarious, because Eddie’s apartment is actually meticulously clean to the point where Richie is a little terrified, but if anybody could find a flaw in Eddie’s cleaning methods, it’d be little Eddie.

_I told him I got the sofa secondhand and he lost it,_ Eddie’s written.

Baby Richie leans over Richie’s shoulder and says, “What happened with Eddie? Did he like, trip and cut his cheek open on a hangnail or something?” He snickers. “Did he freak out about AIDS?”

“Bowers stabbed him in the face,” Richie absently says. “He freaked out about tetanus.”

“What the _fuck_,” says baby Richie, the smile dropping right off. “Where were everyone else?!”

“Bev and Ben were right downstairs,” says Richie, ignoring the queasiness in his gut. It’s stupid, he knows, but sometimes he thinks, maybe, if he hadn’t left—well, things would be mostly the same, but still. “Mike, Stan, Bill and I were out looking for tokens for this ritual to kill It, and Eddie was just in the _bathroom_. You can’t expect someone to get fucking stabbed in the goddamn _bathroom_.”

“In _Derry_, with a fucking _killer clown_—”

“It wasn’t the killer clown, it was Bowers, Pennywise was fucking with _Stan_ at the time,” says Richie, throwing his hands up. “Also, nobody thought to mention to any of us that, hey, by the way, Henry Bowers is on the loose, maybe keep an eye out for a fucking psycho with a knife!”

“It’s _Derry_,” the fetus shrilly says, voice pitching up an octave, “how could you not know?!”

“Because I didn’t remember!” says Richie. “None of us did except Mike, because when you leave Derry you forget Derry, and It, and everything else. It’s some kind of—fucked-up magic bullshit, and it only stops after you kill It.” Although even Mike hadn’t expected Bowers to try to murder them.

“Wait,” says little baby Richie, “if you forget Derry when you leave Derry…”

“You forget the others,” says Richie, a little softer now, seeing the heartbreak on his own face, just almost three decades younger. “We only got back together to kill It like a year ago. Which we succeed at, by the way, which is why we still know each other.” Derry’s still a shithole, but it’s a shithole that’s starting to make increments of progress now, with the ancient evil infesting it finally gone for good.

“But we _forget_,” says the kid. He looks all broken up about this, and, shit, yeah, the Losers’ Club had been a family even then. There’s nothing quite like near-death experiences and heavy trauma to bond a group of scrappy young kids, really.

“We find each other again,” says Richie, awkwardly clapping his younger self on the back. “It just takes some time, ‘s’all. And it’s worth it, believe me.”

Baby Richie stares up at him, and then tucks into Richie’s side and begins to shake. Something wet spreads across his shirt, but whatever, it’s fine. Richie puts his phone aside and just—hugs the kid, the way he used to wish his dad would. Lets him sob about unfairness into his shirt for a while, patting his back.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he says, softly. “We go through way too much shit, but we’re gonna be okay in time, swear to fucking god.”

“That’s not really that reassuring,” says baby Richie, sniffling, but he clings on tight and doesn’t let go.

So maybe the fetus isn’t that much of a dipshit after all.

\--

“The fuck, man,” says the kid, as Richie lets him into the guest room, “this looks like a motel room that nobody ever uses. Do you _ever_ have anybody over or are we a forty-year-old virgin?”

He takes it back. The fetus is a dipshit.

\--

The first kiddie Loser who manages to get into the group chat is, surprisingly, not Richie’s babyfaced teenager self, but _teenaged Eddie_. Richie finds out halfway through writing a set of jokes when his phone starts to buzz with notifications, and ever curious, he opens it up just in time to watch Eddie spam some...keysmashes?

_wqerqrq;gs zZZz,_ Richie reads.

_u ok there eds?_ he writes.

_it’s not that late in New York what’s going on,_ Stan pipes up after him.

_IS THIS WORKING,_ Eddie responds. _IM FIGURING THIS OUT 11342053 okay i think i got it._

_oh my god are you baby Eddie,_ Richie texts, trying to contain his laughter. Baby Richie’s conked out in the guest room, because he’d slept late last night and is fully willing to take advantage of how soft and fluffy the bed in the guest room is, despite his apparent reservations about the decor. Which, really, like he’s an expert with a James Dean poster on his bedroom door. _oh my GOD did Eddie let the baby at his phone holy shit._

_shut up were thirteen were kids but were not babies,_ fetus Eddie shoots back. God, he’s even touchier at this age, Richie’d forgotten that.

_we’re fucking forty do you think we care,_ Richie writes.

_where’s non-80s Eddie anyway?_ Stan writes.

_he wen t to go talk to this lawyer,_ baby Eddie writes. _didnt say why just told me to stay in his place also its fucking terrible i think its infested with BEDBUGS._

_nah he made damn sure the couch was free of bugs and other surprises,_ Stan writes. _I should know because I spent a night over once, slept on that couch, and the worst that happened to me was a crick in the neck._

_the pillows are ITCHY,_ baby Eddie writes. Richie imagines him jabbing angrily at the screen, lip poking out furiously. _why am i living in squalor like this what the fuck happened to me and my standards._

_you married your mom,_ Richie tells him.

_GROSS RICHIE shut the FUCK up,_ is baby Eddie’s response. He doesn’t say anything more after that, but the next response from Eddie’s phone is, _okay I got my phone back from teenaged me tell me he didn’t do something stupid._

_he roasted your couch and you need a new one,_ Richie writes. _also idk did he fuck up your settings?? he was tooling around with the thing before he got in here. how’s the divorce coming along?_

_couple more things then we’re done. how do you get a kid to sleep btw?_

_take them out to a park and let them burn the energy off,_ Stan writes. _barring that, Netflix._

_talk about financial portfolios and shit for an hour and I guarantee you he’ll just pass out ten minutes in,_ Richie adds. _exhibit A: me._

_Fuck You Richie,_ Eddie types, and Richie snorts out a laugh. Some things haven’t changed at all, have they, not even with twenty-seven years apart and memory loss and murderous clowns in the mix.

He closes the group chat, checks his fridge and his cupboards, and then pulls up a recipe for microwaved mac and cheese. He puts his phone in view where he can check the recipe regularly, and starts putting out bowls. Dipshit Richie’s gonna be hungry when he wakes up, and he remembers mac and cheese having been something he used to crave, sometimes.

Might as well make the kid feel better while he’s here.


	3. kicking down all the rusty fences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from the New Politics' "West End Kids".

Bill and Audra live, theoretically, an hour away. It’s theoretical because Richie has lived that city traffic life, and while LA’s not quite as bad as New Fucking Goddamn York Fucking City, that’s really not saying much. Every city has a traffic problem, especially around rush hour, so instead of taking his car and risking being stuck for three hours in the same car as baby dipshit Richie, freshly awoken from a good night’s sleep, he elects to tell Bill to please take his tall-ass child to an ice cream parlor they both know. Partly, it’s because he wants to see the younger Bill for himself, just to confirm he’s not going batshit crazy or something.

Also, the ice cream parlor is in walking distance.

Baby Richie doesn’t stop chattering on their way there, twisting around to exclaim at everything and everyone that passes by. Keanu Reeves walks past with a French fry sticking out of his mouth and baby Richie nearly trips over himself when Richie casually says, “Righteous, Keanu Reeves just passed us by.” They spot a billboard for the new Spider-Man and baby Richie just about explodes out of excitement when Richie tells him about the (terrifyingly huge) cinematic universe this new Spidey’s a part of.

God. Despite everything that Derry is and does and was and did to him, he kind of feels nostalgic, watching this past version of himself exclaim in giddy excitement over all the things Richie’s taken for granted while living in LA. Kid’s never been out of Derry, won’t be until he hits eighteen and moves out to chase a dream. Won’t forget till then.

He’s gonna be okay, but he’s gonna go through a lot of shit to get there, and the thought of it makes Richie irrationally unhappy. This ridiculous kid in coke-bottle glasses with a mouth worse than a sewer should be goddamn happy. They all should be.

Richie’s vaguely aware this is his age talking here. Forty years old means he can’t help but look at teenagers and think, _holy fucking shit, who’s letting you out of the house, you’re tiny and vulnerable._ So he doesn’t say anything to his younger self, who is probably going to stare at him in horror and then call him a dumpster raccoon again.

God, he was funnier as a kid. Is funnier as a kid. He’s gonna steal this kid’s jokes, it’s fine, he’s only stealing from himself, really.

Bill and his mini version are already there when they get to the ice cream parlor. Baby Richie grins wide when he sees baby Bill, and saunters on over without a care in the world and says, in a crappy British accent, “What-ho! Who is this lordly fellow I see before me? Why, it must be Sir William Denbrough the novelist!”

“Hey, R-Richie,” says baby Bill, smiling and pulling his friend up into the seat beside him. “We’re getting the biggest sundae they have, do you want s-s-some of it?”

“Fuck yeah,” says baby Richie reverently.

“Hey, Bill, tiny Bill,” Richie says, “did you get me anything? A milkshake, or something?”

“You’re lactose intolerant,” Bill says. “I got you a fruit shake.”

“I’m _what_,” baby Richie squawks.

“You get lactose intolerant at thirty-eight,” Richie tells him, “so enjoy dairy products while you can. Pretty soon every time you drink milk shit will just explode out of your ass.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” says _both_ Bills in eerie unison, looking faintly disgusted.

“What,” says baby Richie, “like, _every_ time? Is this like the time Eddie thought he was lactose intolerant and had like only a little bit of ice cream ‘cause he thought anything more would make him shit blood or—”

“Fucking b-b-_beep_, Richie,” says fetus Bill, not very heatedly.

Bill puts his face in his hands, and says, “I think I’ll just forget the sundae and have some coffee. This has been illuminating and _fucking disturbing_.”

“Says the horror writer,” says Richie, unrepentant even as Bill flicks him the middle finger. “And no. No, you just cannot have anything that comes out of a cow’s tits, period.”

“Hang on, hang on, but you have cheese in your apartment,” baby Richie starts. “I raided your fridge, you had cheese even before I was there.”

“Yep,” Richie says.

“Sooooo?”

“Be honest with me here,” says Richie, “if I offered you a freshly-grilled cheese sandwich, would you turn it down? Would you? Because I’m you and you’re me and we both know for a fucking fact that we would eat the fucking sandwich.” And if Bill weren’t here, he’d have the goddamn milkshake too.

“_Freshly_-grilled, right?” says baby Richie, after a moment thinking this over. “Because if I’m gonna have explosive shits after eating something it better be tasty as fuck, I’m just saying.”

Bill waves the waitress over and says, “Yeah, can you downgrade the sundae, I think I’ll just have an espresso. Thanks.”

\--

The kids demolish their sundae in record time, while Bill and Richie are still talking about scripts and pitches and new books and Comedy Central and someone trying to option the rights to one of Bill’s old books, the one about the artist with reality-altering powers. “I’m flying out to New York this weekend to talk to HBO,” he says, “they’re thinking about making it a miniseries.”

“You’re gonna make them change the ending, right?” Richie asks.

“Are you never going to let me live that down?” Bill asks, but he’s laughing. “How’s the special coming along?”

“Ehhhhh,” says Richie, see-sawing his hand in the air. He cuts a glance at baby Richie laughing at baby Bill’s ice cream mustache just beside them, and chews on his bottom lip. “Still working on it, y’know how hard it is to be funny. Wait, hang on—”

And he tugs his phone out, tilting it away from baby Richie. He texts Bill, _I haven’t told the fetus we’ve come out yet._

Bill’s phone buzzes, and he says, “Huh, must be Audra. Hang on,” before he tugs it out. His eyebrows climb higher onto his forehead, but he doesn’t say anything, just texts back, _how badly do you think he’s going to take it?_

_I’ll give him a couple of days to settle down before I drop it on him,_ Richie writes. _he’d lose his shit otherwise._

_can’t hide it from him for long,_ Bill cautions.

_not planning to._ But he is good at keeping secrets, even from himself. He stuffs the phone back into his bag and says, “We’re gonna have to come up with a story about these kids.”

Said kids look at them, now more interested in the adults’ conversation than they were before. “You could say I’m your secret lovechild,” says baby Richie, waggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” says Richie, flatly, “no.” For one thing, Richie’s only ever had sex with two women in his life, and both times had gone spectacularly badly. For another thing, he was using a condom and they were on the pill, so it’s not like they could’ve produced a kid save for the smallest of chances. For _another_ thing, the timelines don’t match up. Baby Richie’s thirteen. Richie experimented when he was nineteen and then _never fucking again_. “I’m thinking you’re my cousin.”

“Distant cousin,” says baby Richie, before he takes on a British accent, “from all the way across the pond! Pip-pip, cheerio, wonderful afternoon, sirs!”

“Nah, no, it’s more like this,” says Richie, before launching into his best John Oliver impression: “Judging by your reaction, Canada, I’m guessing you were waiting for the decline of the American Empire for a very, very long time, so—congratulations! You’ve got a front-row seat to the high-speed car crash that is the fall of America.”

The dipshit guffaws, and baby Bill even looks a little bit thrown. “That wasn’t t-t-_terrible_,” he says, wonderingly.

“I built my whole fucking career on this shit,” says Richie, because really, without the girlfriend jokes and the veneer of heterosexuality the only original pillar of his career now is his impressions, “if it was terrible I’d have been kicked out of Hollywood.”

“M. Night Shyamalan,” says Bill.

“Wh-Wh-Who?” baby Bill asks.

“I thought you guys were ending buddies,” says Richie. To Little Bill, he says, “Worse endings than Bill over here, if you can believe it. And _Sixth Sense_ but it’s just been shit since then.”

“Ha fucking ha,” says Bill, kicking lightly at Richie’s shin. “My point is, Hollywood will take anyone, don’t believe Richie when he says they won’t.”

“We already knew,” says baby Richie. “Like, the second I laid eyes on him,” and he jerks a thumb over to Richie, “I knew Hollywood would take any old geezer.”

“I’m _forty_, not seventy, dipshit,” Richie shoots back.

“Still a geezer, old man,” says baby Richie.

“So I actually l-like the distant c-cuh-cousin story,” says baby Bill, valiantly trying to rescue the conversation, bless his little heart. “How’re your p-parents going to take it, though?”

“They’ve been dead nine years now, I got a feeling they don’t have a say,” says Richie, with a shrug, and baby Richie’s eyes go wide and horrified. Ah, shit. Right. “Heart attacks in their sleep at 64,” he adds. “They were happy, kiddo, they didn’t feel a thing.” At least he hopes not, but then what does he know? It’s not as if he listened a whole lot to anyone after they died, just floated along in a haze of grief. They had loved him, and he had loved them, as best as they all could.

“Could we have—” the kid starts.

“We couldn’t,” says Richie, then, somewhat desperately: “Bill, you’re a writer, come up with a story for what you’re doing with a kid!”

“My aunt went off on a honeymoon to Manila with her third husband and dumped her kid on me and Audra,” Bill quickly says. To little Bill he says, “That all right with you?”

“_Did_ Auntie N-Nuh-Nora get married again?” baby Bill asks, with the weariness of someone who’s been through this too many times before. “Yeah, it’s okay. Why is sh-she in Manila?”

“So no one asks her questions,” says Bill. “Rich, you still sticking to the distant cousin story?”

“Yeah, so the dipshit better polish up on His British accent if he wants to keep it, I’m just saying,” says Richie. “_Pip-pip, what-ho, cheerio, can I have a spot of tea my good fellows_ is not gonna cut it. It’ll just be easier to say you’re from Indiana or something.”

“Indiana’s _boring_,” says baby Richie. “And I’m you, I can pick up Voices just fine. Where do you think you got it _from_?”

“Fucking prove it, shortbus,” says Richie.

Baby Bill says, “Actually, no, let’s not do the B-B-British accent, Rich. He’s not wr-wrrr-wrong, you could maybe settle for s-suh-something easier.”

Richie beckons the waitress over, intending to get tiny Bill some ice cream or something. Baby Richie full-on pouts. God, Richie misses when he could get away with pouting like that, nowadays people just roll their eyes when he does it.

“Like a S-Southern accent,” fetus Bill finishes.

Bill, right beside him, melts into giggles.

Richie stares him dead in the eye, before he says to the waitress, “One black coffee, please.”


	4. hang on to the moment we're in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from A Great Big World's "Where Does The Time Go?"

Bev doesn’t tend to come back to New York, these days. She only ever shows up when she has to appear in court and give testimony, and otherwise she and Ben are off in their love nest somewhere in Nowhere, Nebraska, or—god only knows where else. There was a solid period of time where Eddie and the rest of the group chat kept getting pictures of Paris from them at the same time Mike was spamming them with pictures of the World’s Largest Ball of Twine (disputed), that had been a very interesting week. So generally, Eddie doesn’t really expect her to show up on his doorstep, with Ben in tow.

He certainly doesn’t think she’d show up with their _kiddie versions_.

“Beverly! Ben!” shrieks teenaged Eddie, sprinting out of his room like a bullet the second teenaged Bev says, “Where’s Eddie?”

“Hi!” says Ben, and the three kids just melt into a happy pile of hugs and shouting, powerful enough to melt through even tiny Eddie’s general distrust of anything that could carry germs. And Eddie should know.

“You guys should’ve called ahead,” says Eddie, letting his friends in, “I’d have fixed the place up for you. It’s been kinda—rough, lately.” Which is an understatement. Teenaged Eddie might not be as messy as other kids, but he’s just as much of an exhausting asshole to deal with. God. Now he weirdly understands It, which is a horrifying thought that he is going to never look at again starting right the fuck now.

“Yeah, we know,” says Bev, nodding to the kids chattering wildly. “I’m not actually planning on staying long—I need to go meet a lawyer about Rogan & Marsh, and then after that we’ll be out of your hair.”

“It’s just, well,” says Ben, picking up where Bev’s left off, “I’d take the kids, but I’m moral support.” And if Tom Rogan breaks his restraining order and comes near Bev, he’ll have to go through Ben, and Ben might not have the same well of anger that Eddie has deep inside him, but he’s faced down a demonic alien clown with the rest of them and screamed it to death. Eddie has faith Ben and Bev will wreck Rogan’s ass if he tries to break his restraining order. “So could you—”

“Stan can’t do it?” Eddie asks.

“You’re the closest Loser,” says Bev. “Come on. We’ll take you for a drink after, how does that sound?”

“Only if I’m not the one driving,” says Eddie.

“I’ll drive,” Ben volunteers. “I know a guy who runs a rental company here. We met in college.”

Eddie considers this. Certainly it wouldn’t do a lot of good for his blood pressure to have _three_ teenaged Losers as his responsibility, but the alternative is having to find some way to keep them cooped up in his apartment, clawing at the walls. He is _not_ going to introduce them to Netflix, and to his frequent rewatches of Richie’s specials (like a lovesick fucking _idiot_), and so what remains is this: Eddie currently works from home as a freelance analyst, therefore Eddie can keep an eye on the kids without worrying about meetings with anyone but his lawyers.

And, really, New York’s a pretty dangerous place, all things considered. Eddie lives in one of the nicer parts and he still keeps a can of mace in his pocket, has multiple alarms on his apartment so not even a mouse can touch something without Eddie hearing about it. Three teenagers from the 1980s, without supervision in New York City in 2017? _God, no._ They don’t even know if getting the kids harmed irrevocably might fuck up their timeline, somehow. Eddie absolutely does not want to find out.

“I’ll take them,” he says. “You guys go do your thing, I’ll keep them out of your hair.”

It shouldn’t be too hard. Even with little Eddie in the mix, Ben’s not much of a troublemaker, and Bev’s a smart kid. Things should be fine.

\--

The kids immediately coerce Eddie into taking them to get egg creams at Gem Spa, the old newsstand. Then Eddie has to keep teenaged Beverly from trying to take a pack of cigarettes off the rack while sweet-talking the guy at the counter, which, _no_, Bev. He doesn’t buy her the cigarettes on the way out either, because he’s read about smokers’ increased chances of lung cancer, okay, he’s not about to help that along.

Then little Eddie pulls up a YouTube video and says, “Oh, hey, we should try this burger, it’s served on a pretzel bun—”

So that’s how they’re here now, at an artsy restaurant, chowing down on burgers. Eddie’s made sure that what few allergies do exist for his younger self have been accommodated, and gotten himself some fries and ketchup because, well, why not.

“—and we saw _whales_,” teenaged Ben’s saying, eyes lit up with a bright cheer. “And a turtle swam past the boat! Here, the older me let me borrow one of his phones so I could take a picture.”

Teenaged Eddie crowds into Ben’s space, peering at the phone and whistling lowly. “Holy _shit_, I didn’t know turtles even still existed,” he says. “I thought they’d have all died out by 2000 or something, I read somewhere that they were going to at the rate they were being hunted.”

“Show him the one with the whale,” Beverly says, leaning in too, stealing a fry off Eddie’s plate as she goes. “That one!”

“Can we swap?” teenaged Eddie says. “The older me’s living in a total roach motel, it’s disgusting.”

“I _clean the bathroom four times a week,_” says Eddie, furious. “I fumigated just last week because Richie swung by to film some standup for a YouTube channel and he found a _single roach_, I have _standards_.”

“Richie has a YouTube channel?” teenaged Eddie says, and oh, shit. Oh, _shit_. Eddie had made sure to clear out his history so teenaged Eddie wouldn’t accidentally stumble on Richie’s coming out video, but it’s still one of the first results someone might find if they just write “richie tozier standup” into the search bar.

Would it seriously fuck with the timeline if teenaged Eddie found out about Richie’s coming out years earlier? Probably. Probably not. Eddie doesn’t remember anything happening to the timeline, but then again that could change at any time. Probably best to like, preserve the timeline as much as they can.

“Yeah, and for timeline purposes,” says Eddie, pulling over so he can pull his phone away from the kids, “we’re not touching his YouTube channel with a fifty-foot pole. Trust me, his sense of humor just gets worse over twenty-seven years.”

“No way,” says little Eddie. There’s a look on his face that Eddie recognizes, the disbelieving look that he just _knows_ is his teenaged self’s hamfisted attempt at goading him. Well, it’s not going to work. Eddie is _immune_.

“I saw a bit of his first stand-up special,” says little Ben, and oh, shit. Richie’s first stand-up special is all ghostwritten, meant more to shock a laugh out of the audience than anything. “It was—a little weird? Here, I figured out how to download things.”

Eddie texts Ben, _they figured out how to download shit._

_They’re smart kids,_ Ben texts back. _What’s this about?_

_how fucked are we if the kids find important shit out thirty years early?_ Eddie writes.

Teenaged Eddie, from the backseat, exclaims in sheer disbelief, “Does he even _write_ his own jokes anymore or does he just steal from the worst joke books?”

\--

Thankfully, the kids hop from Richie Tozier’s shitty stand-up specials to Eddie Izzard to John Mulaney to Patton Oswalt in record time. Thank fucking god for YouTube and its weirdass algorithms.

Less thankfully, they do it without earphones, and with running commentary.

(“Well, what did he expect, if you say you pee _eleven times a day_, he could’ve had an enlarged prostate or an inflamed bladder—”

“He could’ve just started with the airplane problem.”

“Or checked literally any other box.”

“—and it could’ve even been _prostate cancer_, do you know the symptoms, it’s when you start pissing actual blood, or when you’re pissing way too much in one day already but you still feel like you haven’t peed enough—”

“Please stop talking about prostate cancer while I’m _fucking driving_.”)

Even less thankfully—

“Hey, _dickwad_!” Eddie shouts out the car window. “Signal lights are there for a fucking _reason_! I’ve got fucking _children_ in the backseat, they could’ve _died_, you piece of shit!”

“I’m sorry, we could’ve _what_,” says teenaged Eddie, his voice pitching up a notch as he jerks his head up from Patton Oswalt talking about interrupting an orgy.

“_Fuck you,_” Eddie hollers, and raises a middle finger at the Prius speeding away.

So all in all, it’s been a harrowing day. Eddie finally pulls over to their next destination, the Museum of Natural History that Richie had been somewhat disappointed over, and the kids all but spill out of the car out of excitement. Little Ben, in particular, looks like he’s this close to just exploding out of sheer delight. With a twinge of nostalgia, Eddie remembers Ben showing them his board, the strings linking various missing posters and black-and-white photos together.

He’s seen Ben’s boards now, a few times. They’re less conspiracy theorist and more architect, sketches of buildings linked to existing pictures of various architectural styles and even a couple of fashion sketches, but there’s still a touch of the boy who linked things together, who saw connections that could be made between two things that no one else would’ve put together. Fashion and architecture. Murders and missing children and factory explosions.

Honestly Eddie prefers the architecture. It’s less the stuff of true crime podcasts.

They head in, all four of them, and the kids shout over the T-Rex skeleton that greets them. Eddie tugs his phone out of his pocket and takes a picture of the kids to send to the group chat.

_this is the cutest fucking thing I’m going to melt of adorableness,_ Richie texts back. Then a notification pops up that he’s still typing, but what comes is a burst of letters: _ehkavdjsv jdns_. Then: _this is totes 40yp richie r u nerds at a museum for virgins yn_.

_hey tiny get off the fucking phone,_ Eddie sends. He glances over at the kids, then breathes a sigh of relief—they haven’t noticed the group chat, which means Ben hasn’t installed it on the phone he let his younger self have.

_big words from a smol boi,_ teenaged Richie writes back. A few seconds later, another message comes up, and it reads, _okay, fetus me has a point, you are smol._

_fuck you I’m 5’9”, you’re just freakishly tall,_ Eddie writes back. He looks up and sees that the kids have migrated to the welcome desk, and walks on over to help them out.

“Got some rambunctious kids here, huh,” says the lady at the counter, a corner of her mouth quirking upward. Bev, out of the corner of Eddie’s eye, passes Ben a brochure, and whispers something in his ear that makes him light up and pull his older self’s phone out. Downloading an audio tour, Eddie’s guessing.

“They’re—not my kids,” says Eddie. “I’m babysitting for a friend.” Which is true, it just leaves out the time travel bit. He fishes a brochure out, then chances a glance at the visitor’s sheet and stares at a familiar childish handwriting: _Frankie Tozier._

“_Tozier_, really?” Eddie whispers as they head off to the Hall of Biodiversity.

Teenaged Eddie heatedly says, “It was the first name I could think of!”


	5. forget the mess i'm in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Cold War Kids' "Miracle Mile".

Richie’s agent Lauren calls him over the phone and says, “Okay, I got you a fifteen-minute spot at the Comedy Store on Friday,” two days from now, Richie notes, which is a pretty tight schedule, “at 9:45 after Santino. Are you working on a set right now? _Please_ tell me you’ve got something.”

“Yeah,” says Richie, keeping an eye on his dipshit fetus self, loose in one of LA’s last video rental stores and bouncing on his heels. Every so often Richie has to wander in, drag baby Richie away from the DVDs with _Hot Girls Gone Wild_ on the covers, and put up with the fucking Oscar bait movie star performance baby Richie puts up about it. Jesus. He fucking _knows_ what the kid’s actually looking at, it’s the guys with abs you could grate cheese on. “Yeah, I got a kid I’m trying to make sure doesn’t fucking run into traffic when I turn my back on him.”

“Holy _shit_, there’s more _Star Wars!_” baby Richie calls, holding up—oh, fuck.

“Hang on, Laurie, I’ll call you back,” Richie says, ending the call. He marches over and plucks a DVD copy of _The Phantom Menace_ from his baby self’s hands, and says, “No. _Fuck_ no.”

“Oh, come on,” says baby Richie, “don’t tell me I grow up to hate _Star Wars_.”

“No, but we grow up to watch George Lucas take a steaming shit all over it,” says Richie, heatedly, putting it back on the shelf. He’d also been uncomfortably attracted to Obi-Wan Kenobi, even knowing fully well he grew up to look like a grody desert hermit. “So fucking sue me if I wanna keep you from the soul-crushing disappointment for a few more years.”

Baby Richie squints up at him through his coke-bottle glasses. God, it’s surreal looking _down_ at himself. “There is no way it’s that bad,” he says.

“I am literally telling you it’s that bad,” says Richie. “Me. You, from 2017, who sat through all three prequels in cinemas watching George Lucas _destroy your childhood dreams_.” And who also sat through _Rogue One_ uncomfortably attracted to Bail Organa, but that’s not something the kid needs to know about.

“Yeah, but we’ve already established our tastes get shittier over time,” says baby Richie, casually. “You drink _kale smoothies_.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Richie huffs, then glances around the place, looking for the Clone Wars series. “Listen, you want new _Star Wars_ that bad, there’s gotta be a _Clone Wars_ set around here somewhere—”

“What the dick is that?” says baby Richie, scoffing. “I’ve already got _you_ if I want a clone war, I want _Star Wars_—”

“And I’m telling you as someone who doesn’t want you to experience the _sheer existential disappointment_—” Richie starts, his voice going higher and higher in volume.

“Uh, ‘scuse me?” says a young woman’s voice, and Richie very slowly straightens up. Oh, shit. He’s probably going on the Internet again for screaming at a small child about _Star Wars_. “Sir? Could you please argue with your child outside?”

“Oh, he’s, uh, not my kid,” Richie says.

“Howdy, m’lady,” fetus Richie says, tipping an imaginary hat at the woman. At the _girl_, Jesus, this kid can’t be any older than, what, seventeen? She’s still got pimples for crying out loud! Is this her part-time job? And what is that pinned to her lapel? “And a fine ol’ mornin’ too!”

“It’s afternoon, actually,” says the girl, disconcerted. Then she blinks at Richie, then at the dipshit fetus. “Wait,” she says, her eyes growing wide with recognition, “you’re Richie Tozier?”

Baby Richie’s jaw drops.

Oh, fuck, caught. Richie forces a smile onto his face, and says, “Yep. That’s me, old Trashmouth—don’t mind the kid here, my cousin dumped him on me for a couple of weeks. He’s, uh, practicing his impressions.” He nudges the kid’s side, and says, in a low 1950s Clint Eastwood voice, “Isn’t that right, fella?”

The dipshit shakes his head after a moment, then says, “Yeah—I mean,” he coughs, then adopts a British accent, “why, yes, by Jove, you’ve got it!”

“He’s got a long way to go,” Richie tells the girl.

“It’s sweet of you to teach him,” says the girl. “Gosh—do you do autographs? Or pictures? My girlfriend is a big fan of yours, she says you’re her inspiration, and she’d just about faint if she knew I met you.” Oh, a girlfriend, that explains the pin: it’s a pride flag, although what identity it stands for escapes Richie. Maybe lesbian? It’s got that orange stripe.

Beside Richie, the kid stiffens. His eyes flick to the girl’s, and he seems almost to shrink a little into himself, looking around the store as if the girl’s loud mention of her girlfriend could call trouble down on them.

“I don’t do pictures,” says Richie, “but if you’ve got something I can autograph and a pen, sure. Just, uh, do one thing for me and the fetus here?”

“What?”

“_Phantom Menace_, how bad is it?”

The girl scrunches up her nose. “Dude,” she says, “the prequels were never that bad, lemme get the shirt,” and she flounces off towards the back room.

The fetus immediately says, “You heard her!”

“Yeah, I did,” says Richie, annoyed. “The prequels weren’t that bad? The _prequels_? What the fuck did she even watch?”

“No, the other bit!” says his teenaged self, waving a hand at where the girl went. “She said she had a _girlfriend_. Like, out loud, right here!” He pauses, then adds, unconvincingly, plastering a faux-hopeful look on his face, “D’you think they’d let me watch?”

Oh, gross, _gross_, it’s so weird now hearing that out of his mouth when he’s been upfront for a while about strongly preferring men over women. Richie scrubs a hand over his face, crouches down to meet the kid’s eye level, and says, bluntly, “No. They’re fucking lesbians, kiddo, they’re not interested in what your wang’s got to offer them.”

Baby Richie opens his mouth, ready to make some smartass remark.

“And no one in this video store gives a single shit she has a girlfriend,” says Richie, as gently as possible now, trying not to raise the kid’s hackles. “You saw that pin on her uniform? That’s a neon sign right there, that she chose to wear, because she feels _safe_ enough to say it.” He lets out a breath. “I won’t say she doesn’t deal with assholes sometimes,” he says, “but the fact that she’s out in public saying she’s got a girlfriend, wearing that pin—it means she gets more people who don’t give a shit than people who do. She’s okay. Don’t worry that she’s going to bring some shit down on her and us, okay? She won’t.”

The kid’s eyes widen for a moment, as if he’s connecting the dots in his head. Softly, he asks, “So it’s—it’s fine? No one’s gonna come after her or us?”

“Well, no one’s coming after _her_,” says Richie, “and the only people coming after me are the paparazzi. And all you gotta do with those is flip them off so they can’t sell shit.”

The fetus, shockingly, says nothing for a moment. Then he says, “S-So we’re still—”

“Yeah, always,” says Richie. “We try. We try really hard not to be, but it doesn’t work.” He’d relegated himself to quick one-night stands with men instead, when he could get it, but that’s not something he’ll tell baby Richie about right now. Kid’s already having a Moment. “So we just—live with it instead. And believe me, it gets easier, for us.”

The fetus thinks this over for a moment, then takes off his glasses and wipes them off on his shirt. “Do we tell the Losers?” he asks. “Did we—Did we tell Mom and Dad?”

“The Losers know,” Richie assures the kid, squeezing his shoulder, the way he remembers his dad used to sometimes. God. He misses his dad all of a sudden, for all that Wentworth Tozier wasn’t always the most emotionally available parent. Neither was Maggie Tozier. Now Richie wonders if that was them, or if that had been Its insidious influence. “Mom and Dad—we tell them before they die. They know for about six months, and they’re okay with it.”

“Oh,” says baby Richie, eyes getting all watery and shit. Fuck, right, baby Richie isn’t used to his parents being dead. “That—And, and no one thinks we’re—diseased, or rotten, or anything?”

_Eddie_, he means. Richie shakes his head. “No, you sit them down one at a time and tell them,” he says, “and they’re happy for you. It takes you almost thirty years to tell them but they’re just glad you tell them.” _Do better,_ he wants to say. _Live louder. Don’t let them go._

The kid swipes fingers under his eyes. “Oh,” he says, “okay.” He doesn’t ask for more details than that, and Richie doesn’t volunteer them. “So—I could. I could tell them? Now?”

“Not through the groupchat on my fucking phone,” says Richie, letting go of him and standing up. “This shit’s special, you’re not coming out via tweet or text, you make a phone call or you do it in person so everyone’s as intensely uncomfortable as you are.”

“That mean I can get a phone and your Netflix password?” asks baby Richie.

“Fuck no,” says Richie.

\--

The kid doesn’t ask if Richie’s come out to the whole world, in general. Richie doesn’t volunteer the information. That’s baby Richie’s worst fear realized, and while on the other side it isn’t as bad as he thought, he still remembers the terror that bubbled in the back of his throat before he walked out on that stage and started talking.

It’s a good thing the girl from the video store doesn’t say it out loud. Just says, “Thank you so much!” after he signs her shirt (_69 And Other Numbers_, 2010 tour, it’s just embarrassing) and rents the videos—_Phantom Menace_ included, unfortunately, but they have _Clone Wars_ in too, so there’s that much.

He calls Lauren back when they get into the car, fetus Richie carrying an armful of DVDs and Blu-Rays. “Yeah, so,” he says, “hey, Laurie, I’m babysitting a kid.”

“Who looked at you and thought they could trust you with their child?” asks Lauren, out from the car radio. Baby Richie jumps in shock, eyes wide, then looks up at Richie like Richie has just performed sorcery. “Jesus. Do you want the spot?”

“Fuck yeah, I do,” says Richie. “But first can you handle a shitty little teenager?”

“She couldn’t handle me,” baby Richie says.

“She’s six foot one and does MMA on the side, she could fuck you up, dipshit,” says Richie. “Laurie, don’t fuck the kid up, he’s skinny as a twig.”

“What the hell are you feeding this child?” says Lauren. “Oh god, are you feeding him fucking _Froot Loops_?”

“He took me to an ice cream parlor and said it was my lunch,” says fetus Richie, in as innocent and cheery a tone as possible, belying the shit-eating grin on his face. Richie briefly imagines leaving the dipshit near a sewer.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Lauren. “Ice cream is not a good substitute for lunch! _Who_ even let you have a kid?!”

“My cousin from Indiana,” says Richie, and the lie comes off his tongue easily. Twenty-seven years of lying to people have made him damn good at it. “Who I’m gonna hunt down if she doesn’t come back for her shitty-ass kid in a week.”

“My mom says children are a gift,” fetus Richie says in that same innocent voice.

“Why didn’t she take you with her to Boracay then, if you’re such a gift?” Richie snipes back, and the kid cracks up in answer.

“Oh, shit, the dumpster raccoon gets off a good one, _yowza_—”

“Oh,” says Lauren. “Holy shit, it’s like there’s two of you.”

And _that_ is what pushes Richie over the edge into a fit of laughter too.

\--

“Does Eddie know?”

“What,” says Richie, searching for the DVD player’s remote under the couch, Jesus, he should’ve looked for it when it got lost _months_ ago, “that I’m gay? Yeah, I told you, I sat everyone down one at a time and told them I liked men exclusively. Now I’m lavishing love on Mrs. and Mr. K equally.” Eddie had stared at him after he’d gotten off that first joke about Eddie’s dad and immediately tried to smother him with a couch pillow, which had actually been a far better reaction than Richie had expected from him.

“What? No,” says the fetus. “About—_you know._”

“Oh,” says Richie. “The big tragic gay crush.”

“_Yes_,” says baby Richie, flailing a hand.

“Fucking help me find the remote,” says Richie instead of answering. “Or just get off the damn couch so I can look under the—_ow_, Jesus, you _motherfucker_.”

“I didn’t kick that hard,” baby Richie tells him, making no move to get off the couch. His feet are hovering disgustingly near Richie’s face, so near he can smell them. Oh, god. He’s thinking like Eddie. Is this what getting old is like? “And you didn’t answer my question.”

“Bitch, get your fucking foot out of my face,” Richie huffs, smacking the kid’s ankle.

The ankle prods his cheek again.

Richie suddenly has so much sympathy for his teachers way back in middle school, putting up with this shit.

“It’s not even that hard a question to answer, dickwad,” says the fetus, irritated. Like _he’s_ the one who’s being kicked in the face with bare fucking feet that _smell_.

Isn’t it? But Richie doesn’t know how he’s supposed to answer it. Yes, Eddie knows he’s gay, but no, he doesn’t know Richie has been in love with him since they were kids in the eighties and Eddie was ranting about scoliosis and staph infections and whatever-osis at length. Richie barely managed to come out to him about the gay part, had dodged and ducked via euphemisms until Eddie asked him point-blank to clarify.

“Your foot smells like ass,” he says, to deflect. “Get it the fuck away from me.”

The ankle digs into his cheek all the more. Richie pushes the foot away.

“You sound like Eddie,” the fetus observes. “Jesus, did you tell him or not?”

“I _didn’t_ tell him about the tragic gay crush, all right,” Richie snaps. “He got married to a woman and then got divorced, I’m not gonna push him for shit when he’s still dealing with a goddamn emotional rollercoaster. I’m not that much of an asshole. Now help me _find the fucking remote_.”

Fetus Richie stares at him and says, “He got married? Like, to a woman?”

“That’s what I fucking _said!_”

“Oh,” says the dipshit, and the flash of misery across his face—Jesus, that hurts more than anything else, and all of Richie’s annoyance flies out the window with that one flash. Fuck. Way to break the kid’s heart, Tozier.

“Then he got divorced,” says Richie, somewhat lamely. “He’s got a lot of shit to deal with, I’m not adding my baggage.”

“So, what, we don’t have a chance at all?” baby Richie asks. “Because he’s probably straight and you don’t wanna add more shit onto the pile, is that it?”

“I have _no_ clue,” Richie admits. “But I got a good thing going with him right now, I’m not gonna fuck it up by telling him I’ve been in love with him for twenty-seven years when he’s just gotten out of a toxic thing with a carbon copy of Mrs. K.” God, this is just—too much sincerity for him, and he pushes at the kid’s leg. “Now fucking move so I can find the goddamn remote,” he says.

“Wait, hang on, he married _what?_”

“_Remote_,” says Richie.


	6. never meant to be your problem child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Simple Plan's "Problem Child".
> 
> **content warning:** panic attack this chapter. some discussion of Bev's abusive ex.

The thing about Derry is that the closest thing it really had to a museum was its library. Eddie’s seen the artifacts kept in it, the meticulous note cards about where they came from and what they have to do with the history of Derry.

The library does not come anywhere close to an actual museum in New York, and over an hour later, he and the kids are still in the museum. They’ve migrated from biodiversity to the birds of New York (with pictures taken to send to Stan) to dinosaur fossils so big that Eddie has to take a moment just to wrestle with the mini-existential crisis he feels over the giant skeleton towering over him.

Honestly, thank fucking god for the dinosaurs’ extinction.

“—_years_ ago,” teenaged Ben is saying, one earplug out and looped over the shell of his ear. He’s practically bouncing on his heels.

“That’s pretty cool,” teenaged Bev says, with a sincere grin. It’s funny, really, seeing the puppy love version of Ben-and-Bev, the flush of something new and sweet on their teenaged selves.

“And _terrifying_,” says teenaged Eddie, darkly.

Eddie’s phone vibrates against his side. He sighs, then fishes it out of his pocket and slides it open to see Richie, fast asleep on the couch, with _Star Wars_ playing in the background. There’s a penis drawn onto his cheek in Sharpie and a shitty mustache scribbled under his lip, and he’s drooling into his pillow.

Something warm blooms in Eddie’s chest, under the scar.

_hey young Richie,_ Mike’s typed out.

_phantom menace isnt that bad i just have no taste,_ is the younger Richie’s proclamation, and huh, it really is easier to please kids than it is to please adults with high expectations. _also whats my netflix password i already tried eddies mom._

_fuck you, tiny,_ Eddie writes.

_none of us know what his password is,_ Bill types. It’s a lie and Eddie knows it, Bill and Richie have access to each other’s Netflix accounts, and sometimes Richie hops into Bill’s account just to avoid fucking with his own recommendations. But there’s things the kids don’t need to know just yet, because—well, _timelines_. They’re not even sure if letting the kids know so much about the future is safe just yet, or if it’ll cause some irrevocable paradox that’ll lead to the collapse of spacetime or something.

That would be just their luck, wouldn’t it.

He looks up, and has a minor heart attack when he realizes—the kids have slipped out of sight. “_Shit,_” he says, and strides closer to where he last saw them, marveling over a mummified dinosaur. Where are they? They can’t have gone far, he only took his eyes off them for a _minute_. Fuck, fuck, shit, what if they’ve gotten lost? What if they wandered off and they got lost and they don’t know where the entrance is? Yeah, they’re teenagers, yeah, they fought a sewer clown before they turned fourteen, but they’re still _children_ and now they’re loose in a museum in New York City and oh god what if someone spies Bev or Ben or Eddie’s own younger self in the crowds and marks them as prime fucking targets, sewer clowns are one thing but human criminals are another and there’s just the _three_ of them—

—fire in the crowd, there, there’s Bev! And where Bev is, Ben is, and ergo teenaged Eddie is with them, and Eddie practically bolts towards them, almost knocking over some poor soul with barely an apology. Fuck ‘em anyway.

“Hey, _hey_, what the _fuck_,” he pants once he catches up to the three teenagers, trying to catch his breath, never mind the panic rising in his throat or this sick feeling like he’s about to drown in terror, “don’t—_fuck_—don’t wander—off—like that!” He fumbles around in his jacket pockets for his inhaler, but doesn’t find it and—fuck, fuck, _fuck_—

“We weren’t going that far,” Ben says, confused. Then his eyes widen, and he rushes forward before Eddie can keel over out of sheer panic. “Eddie, shit—”

Bev says, “Eddie, come on, give him your inhaler,” urgently, as she takes his other side, a sturdy weight.

“Shit, shit, _shit_,” says teenaged Eddie, but he presses his inhaler into Eddie’s hand anyway. Eddie pushes any thought of mouth diseases out of his head and triggers the inhaler, and for all that it’s fake it still _helps_. His breath still eases. “I don’t have—do I get asthma later in life, is that a thing that happens, do I get adult-onset asthma—”

“No,” says Eddie, “but you get panic attacks.” Are people looking? He glances around, and notes that the only person actually looking at the moment is some poor toddler gaping at the dude who nearly keeled over in the middle of the exhibit. He gives her a tight smile and waves, then says, “It happens. Can we please for the love of _fucking god_ stick close to each other?”

“We didn’t even go that far, we just went like twenty feet,” teen Eddie says.

“Yeah, okay, new rule,” says Eddie, pinching the bridge of his nose, “you get out of my sight while I’m watching you guys, you’re officially too far.”

Teenaged Eddie bristles, clearly about to snap something back at him.

“Any of you get hurt or _die_,” Eddie says, cutting his younger self off before he can really get started, “what do you think happens to us? Huh?” Not to mention to reality, probably, judging by some of the sci-fi bullshit Richie sometimes drags him to, whenever they’re in the same city for more than a night. God. They’re going by shitty sci-fi movies, that’s how much information they have on this.

The kids digest this for a moment, then all shudder. Teenaged Bev says, “So we can still go anywhere, as long as we stay in sight, right?”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, “I mean, fuck, I’m not gonna stop you guys from going places you want to go, I’m not my—I’ve _been_ in your shoes.” He’s not going to scratch the surface of his deeply, _deeply_ complicated feelings about his mother with three teenagers to babysit, god. “I’m not even going to be five feet behind you,” and teenaged Eddie just barely relaxes, “just don’t leave the room without me.”

“_You_ were looking at your phone,” younger Eddie says, glaring up at him. It’s unsettling.

“Fair,” Eddie concedes, because the second he’d looked down at his phone he’d taken his attention off the kids. “How about this?” He pulls his phone out, shuts it off, and sticks it back into his pocket. “Now you guys have my undivided attention.”

Teenaged Ben pipes up, “Does this mean we can go see the cosmic pathway now?”

\--

It takes them two hours or so to finish their museum tour, just because there’s so _much_. By the time they make it to the souvenir shop, Eddie feels like his feet are just about to fall off, trying to keep up with the three teenaged Losers. He doesn’t even know if he wants that drink anymore, at least not more than he wants to collapse into bed and sleep.

“Hey, look,” says teenaged Ben, “they have a snow globe!” He holds the globe up for Bev’s inspection, so happy when she leans in to peck the top of his head that Eddie can swear he’d float with it if he could. Or—yeah, hover’s a better word for it. Floating makes him think of Bev in the air, her eyes dead, of Richie staring sightlessly up at him, before Eddie—

His fingers twist around where his wedding ring would’ve been, once. Better not to think about that little near-miss. Better not to think about the almosts. He’s already had one panic attack in front of these kids at the idea of losing them, he’d rather not have another.

“Do you think we could keep it once we go back?” teenaged Bev wonders. “It might be nice, having a souvenir.”

“Do you want to fuck up the entire timeline?” teenaged Eddie shoots at her. “Because that just might happen if we go back to 1989 with shit from 20-fucking-17.”

“If?” says young Ben. “I mean, the future’s nice and all, and I like us from the future just fine,” and teenaged Eddie makes an inarticulate noise of shock, “don’t get me wrong, but—I miss home. I miss my mom.”

“My aunt’s probably worried sick by now,” says young Bev, anxiously. Yeah, Eddie remembers her aunt—perfectly nice woman, if somewhat forgetful at times. She wasn’t exactly the best guardian, there couldn’t be in Derry, but she was a thousand times better than Al Marsh, may he rot wherever he’s gone.

“Shit,” says young Eddie, like it’s only just now dawned on him, or like he’s only just now letting himself look, “how long have we been gone? Because my mom’s gonna _flip_ her fucking lid if I’m gone too long.” He grabs a nearby dinosaur model and fiddles with it, for lack of anything to do with his hands.

“I mean,” says Eddie, in a valiant effort to make sure these three kids don’t have synchronized panic attacks on him, “maybe they won’t even know you’re gone! We don’t know anything about b travel, maybe you go back at the second you left off, and no one even knows you spent any time away from Derry.”

There’s a silence.

“You’re not the fucking expert here,” says teenaged Eddie, and now Eddie is beginning to understand why his teachers used to despair of him. He’s got to send them fruit baskets or something. Especially poor Mrs. Ludgate in English of ninth grade, where he and Richie had sat together and fed off each other in a horrible feedback loop of chaos and swear words, and Mr. Collins, who’d been the science teacher for Eddie and Ben’s shared class. “Nobody is a fucking expert here! We’re just going off what we know from movies and books and comics and whatever, and those are barely reliable!”

“Did you get a degree in quantum physics sometime over the summer?” Eddie shoots back. “Yeah, didn’t think so either. I don’t even know if physics is applicable to this at all, it could probably be some weird kind of,” ugh, “_magic_.”

Ben makes a face. “Magic’s kind of a stretch,” he says, but he sounds a little uncertain. After all, he’s seen the same kinds of impossible things they all have, it’s fresher in his memory by dint of his young age.

“Murderous sewer-dwelling clowns are a stretch,” says Eddie. “You learn to make the stretch.”

\--

Bev’s lawyer operates out of a squat, red-brick building in Hell’s Kitchen, in a corner that’s marginally less gentrified than the rest of it. Just down the block from there is a cozy little café (apparently named Corvo Café, which is a strange name) with so few seats that Eddie and the three kids effectively take over half the café when they come in. Eddie holds an internal debate over whether he should go for the healthy, gluten-free sandwich option or the grilled cheese sandwich, but his younger self seems to only take a moment to decide—

“Fuck it,” young Eddie declares, “I want a milkshake.”

So the kids grab New York bagels with cream cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, fries, whatever they can come up with to satisfy their hunger after hours of wandering around a museum. Eddie just orders a latte for himself, then pulls his phone out and turns it back on to text Bev: _@ Corvo Café right now, how are you?_

_save me a sandwich,_ Bev texts back.

_teenaged you already ate it sorry,_ Eddie writes. Then he holds his phone up to get the kids in frame and snaps a picture of them, their heads together, chatting softly. _remember when we used to do this all the time at the diner?_

_and I stole half of everyone’s fries,_ Bev writes back. Eddie imagines her fond smile, remembers how she’d not-so-discreetly snatch a fry from Richie’s plate, how Ben would occasionally sneak more fries onto her plate whenever he noticed her at it. They’d orbited around each other even then, although sometimes Bill would get caught up between them, with his own love for Bev.

Right in front of Eddie, this Bev, smaller and more awkward (and she _is_ awkward, as all teenagers are, Eddie can see that now at forty) discreetly steals a fry off teenaged Eddie’s plate, while young Ben tells him very seriously about the effects of earthquakes on various types of buildings.

_you’re doing it right now,_ Eddie texts her. _Ben’s helping._

_tell me to save me something,_ Bev responds. _and Ben says he wants a salad._

_got it, how long till you guys can come out?_ Eddie writes.

_twenty minutes give or take,_ Bev answers. _g2g, we’re going over the company accounts. Page found some discrepancies in the numbers, she thinks Tom’s embezzling from me and has been for a very long time._

Fucking Tom. The rat bastard. Eddie’s only seen him a few times, and all of them at the courthouse at that. The man had been a sleazeball of the highest order, manipulative and vicious, throwing insults at Bev right there on the courthouse steps. The only thing that had stopped Eddie from snapping back had been Richie grabbing his shirt and telling him not to leave Bev’s side, not to even look at her shitty ex, _you wouldn’t last thirty minutes in a holding cell, Eds, leave the ball-busting to Bev’s lawyers._

_kick his teeth in Bev,_ he texts, then shoves his phone back into his pocket.

In front of him, the teenaged version of Bev is leaning in, amused, as her Ben demonstrates architecture with a stack of French fries and a half-eaten bagel, explaining as he goes. When they look at each other, their eyes seem to sparkle. It’s cute and also a little ridiculous.

Eddie glances over at his younger self, who’s wearing a vaguely pinched expression, and abruptly remembers that while he’s been chaperoning them, teenaged Eddie’s been their third wheel since Bev and Ben dropped their teenaged selves off. More included than other third wheels, of course, but then Bev and Ben do the couple thing and teen Eddie’s left with no one to look to and mouth _oh my god this is happening_ at.

“Did you know they made an Avengers movie in 2012?” Eddie says, after a moment.

“No way,” says teenaged Eddie.

“Yeah, and they made a sequel too.”

“_Holy shit,_” says young Eddie, in tones of awe only a kid who reads comics under his best friend’s covers can take on. He never would’ve imagined that there’d be a sprawling film universe based on those very comics one day, never would’ve thought he’d sit in the movie theater with wide eyes.

Myra’d never liked them. Then again she didn’t like the movies he picked, usually wanting to see shit like _The Notebook_, romantic dramas that Eddie excused himself from halfway through because he couldn’t follow their plotline anymore. After their split, the first thing Eddie had done was queue up as many superhero movies and shows as he could. Then he’d ended up texting Richie through most of them—not the rest of the Losers, just Richie, because once upon a time Richie used to take his comics out for sleepovers so the two of them could read, with bated breath, under the covers with a flashlight.

They’d sit just a little too close, knees touching. Eddie had always kind of liked that. With Richie a thousand miles away, texting had been the closest thing.

“Where can I watch them?” teenaged Eddie’s demanding now.

“I’ve got them on a hard drive back at home,” says Eddie. It’s actually _Richie’s_ hard drive, because Richie has apparently been illegally downloading movies since 2008, which explains the abundance of stories he has about computer viruses infesting his laptop. Thankfully, Eddie’d gotten it cleaned, and for now it’s sitting in his apartment, a treasure trove of superhero blockbusters. “Which—I’ll hook up to the laptop when we get back. Hey,” he says, now addressing the younger Ben and Bev, “you guys wanna watch some movies while we adults go out and get drunk?” Well, two out of three adults, anyway.

“What kind of movies?” Ben asks.

“You guys remember Iron Man?” Eddie says. “They made three movies about him.”

The kids’ eyes grow very, very wide.


End file.
